[Lowfer] Sloppy drifter on top of my signal?

Thu, 8 Jan 2004 06:02:32 -0600

I certainly won't let my Part-5 License go to beaconing. I have no
intensions what so ever to run a high-powered beacon. Why, I see no point in
it at all. I have a 1w beacon which works just fine. Sure I'll watch the
grabber a time or two and let her fly just for laughs to see a super bright
ass ID but not to let it run for an hour let alone all night. That is
pointless as far as my experiment goes.

No worries, no beacons running a kilowatt around here let alone even a
couple of watts. If someone wanted to do some receive tests at various power
levels, just ask and I shall provide the signal. Now all this is just
speculating as Mr. Huie has to approve my license yet but he did let his
buddies know my concerns yesterday whatever that means.

73's,
Mike>WE0H

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Lyle Koehler
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 4:01 AM
To: lowfer reflector
Subject: Re: [Lowfer] Sloppy drifter on top of my signal?

Remember that "high power" on LF is still only a couple of watts of ERP,
which is flea power by HF standards. A 2-watt station 70 miles away should
not be a problem, unless it's *very* close in frequency to a weak signal I'm
trying to copy. A few years ago, there were GWEN stations with truly huge
and very wideband signals that totally clobbered anything below 175 kHz.
Despite that, I could copy KRY on 175.4 kHz almost any night during the
winter. We're only talking about a 20 to 25 dB increase in signal above what
a good LowFER installation can radiate at the 1-watt level. That sounds like
a huge amount, but theoretically it is about 4 "S" units, which would bring
Mike's signal from S5 to S9. Yeah, I know, most receiver S meters run 3 to 4
dB per S unit rather than the alleged standard of 6 dB. Anyway, with
moderate care at the transmitting end to reduce spurious signals such as
"key clicks", a separation of 2 kHz between "high power" stations and
LowFERs would be more than adequate. Somehow the European hams manage to get
by with only 2.1 kHz of *total* band space on LF, so with 30 kHz to play
with, we really shouldn't have a problem.

I think it would be a good idea to adopt a "band plan" whereby Part 5
operations are confined to 175 kHz and below. However, if Mike *did* decide
to put a Part 5 beacon on 185.3026 kHz, it would make it somewhat more
advisable for me to listen elsewhere on the band than it is now with his
1-watt beacon there. Not necessarily a bad thing -- there are other LowFER
signals to look for besides the ones at the "watering hole" that I have
already copied repeatedly.

Lyle, K0LR

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